March 21, 2019:
Out of the 487 complaints registered in the last 10 days in Karnataka, as many as 368 were found to be fake.
A majority of complaints filed from Karnataka on the Election Commission of India’s c-VIGIL app has turned out to be fake. The app was expressly launched to enable the public to report violations to the election code of conduct.
According to the EC data, of the 487 complaints registered in the last 10 days in Karnataka, as many as 368 were found to be fake. Election officials identified 88 genuine complaints & acted on them. Investigation is pending in 21 cases.
The fake cases have become a matter of concern as they have consumed substantial time & resources of the election machinery.
Karnataka chief electoral officer Sanjiv Kumar has asked people to take the app seriously & not upload fake images & videos. These fake images & videos, election officials said, were mostly of youth uploading their real-time selfies. Officials reached the locations only to find that the complainants were gone.
The EC rolled out the app in a big way for the Lok Sabha election. Bengaluru was the testing ground for the app during the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections. The EC revised it based on the feedback it received from Bengaluru. Complaints can be registered by downloading the app from Google Play Store and logging into the account.
The EC hoped that citizens would use it to file complaints related to display of posters & banners, hate/provocative speeches, distribution of cash, liquor & freebies, using loudspeakers after 10 pm & the like, by geo-tagging the location. The app also allows complainants to remain anonymous.
The EC has guaranteed citizens a response time of 100 minutes. Expectations of a large number of people using the app have, so far, been belied.
Of the 87 complaints registered in the four districts of Bengaluru (south, north, central & urban), only 16 turned out to be genuine. “We hope more tech-savy Bengalureans will use the app to file genuine complaints in the coming days,” an election official attached to the Bengaluru urban district said. Bengaluru urban has registered the highest number of complaints (54), followed by Raichur (48), Hassan (42) & Udupi (32).
Joint chief electoral officer Surya Sen AV said the app is being promoted through social media posts, banners & posters under the Systematic Voters’ Education & Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme. “We have already trained booth-level awareness groups to spread the message. We plan to advertise it rigorously in the coming days,” Sen said.
A few election officials working in semi-urban & rural areas told ET that they were facing issues of location accuracy while using the app. “The distance between the geotagged location of the complainant & the one received by the official do not match. The difference, sometimes is even beyond 1 km, which makes it hard for the officer to find the actual location where the violation occurred,” said a district election officer.
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